To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Charles Brian Conn entitled “Low Water: A Collection of Short Fiction.” I have examined the electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. _________________________ Thomas P. Balázs Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: ____________________________ Sybil Baker ____________________________ Christopher Stuart Accepted for the Council: _________________________ Stephanie Bellar Interim Dean of The Graduate School Low Water: A Collection of Short Fiction A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Charles Brian Conn May, 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Charles Brian Conn All rights reserved ii Abstract The craft of fiction evolves and progresses alongside other pursuits in the humanities. This thesis project represents a culmination of study in the process of creating fiction from standard practices which are fundamental to creating fiction that “works” to innovations in the field and how they have shaped the craft through its history. The creative thesis project is an attempt to apply some of these fundamental and experimental concepts to my own creative work and thereby develop a collection of short fiction representative of my abilities as a writer and my training as a writing student. A brief look into the use of point of view in a small selection of published short fiction introduces my collection of four original short stories. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Story 1: Low Water 14 Story 2: Zero 38 Story 3: Prodigal Brother 55 Story 4: The One 78 Bibliography 93 Vita 96 iv Introduction Point of View: Bouncing the Reader Toward Truth 1 In surveying a few popular books on the craft of fiction, namely Rust Hills‟s Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, Janet Burroway‟s Writing Fiction, and David Jauss‟s Alone With All That Could Happen, it is difficult to avoid noting the importance of point of view to any writer‟s craft. Jauss claims it is “arguably the most important element of fiction writing” (25). Burroway says, “Apart from the use of significant detail, there is no more important skill for a writer of fiction to grasp than this” (311). Hills remarks that when an author tells his story, “choices about point of view will undoubtedly be the most important decisions about technique that he has to make” (120). He quotes E. M. Forster: “The „whole intricate question of method‟ resolves itself not into formulae but into the power of the writer to bounce the reader into accepting what he says” (131). Burroway has a particularly well-organized description of the various aspects of point of view. She counts the form of narration (story, monologue, letter, or stream of consciousness, to name several) and the identity of the narrator as important facets of point of view, along with the intended audience (304). But this essay will focus on what Jauss concisely calls “where the language is coming from,” what he considers “one of the most important issues in point of view” (41) and how that relates to stories from three authors: Anton Chekhov, Stephen King, and Tim O‟Brien, from their respective collections, Stories, Different Seasons, and The Things They Carried. The conclusion will briefly discuss how these concepts work in my own collection, which comprises the body of this thesis. 2 At its simplest, point of view can be understood as the grammatical condition of first-, second-, or third-person perspective. In third person, the perspective is divided more distinctly into variations of distance from characters both in time and in consciousness. For instance, a narration may be in present tense and sound like a description of events as they are happening, or like a remembrance of how they happened thirty years ago. Also, these narrations can include the thoughts of more than one character, which Burroway calls editorial omniscience; the thoughts of only one, which she calls limited omniscience; or none of these internal thoughts or feelings, sticking to facts of action, description, and dialogue. Burroway calls this final third person point of view “objective reporting” (297-299). Jauss refers to it as the “dramatic” point of view, because it reads like a play script (26). In the broader context of all aforementioned variations on point of view, Jauss describes the particular choice an author makes for his narration as “where the language is coming from” instead of simply a question of grammatical person (37). This choice defines a specific time and consciousness, a mind at a certain place which is relating the story to us. How we experience a story hinges partly on the way it is narrated, from when and by whom. Much of the craft advice I have read suggests consistency in point of view to be a firm rule. Hills states that once a writer has “indicated by some statement or some construction what point of view is being used in the story, then he is committed to some extent to maintain it” (124). Burroway simply says, “In establishing the story‟s point of view, you make your own rules, but having made them, you must stick to them” (310). 3 Further, she says, “Once established, point of view constitutes a contract between author and reader, and it will be difficult to break the contract gracefully,” indicating that readers will not tolerate much change in point of view once it has been established (311). When craft books claim that point of view is so important, and when they offer advice about its consistency with such words as “commitment” and “contract,” the advice begins to take on the attributes of a fixed rule, or at least a guideline to be broken at the peril of the writer. Jauss has a differing opinion about consistency in point of view. He states: The lack of understanding about point of view is also due to the tendency of authors of creative writing and literature textbooks to write prescriptively instead of descriptively about point of view, asserting that certain techniques are available only to certain types of narrators and that a work‟s point of view should be consistent. (25-26) He clarifies his assertion by pointing out that Chekhov “violates the so-called „rule‟ against shifting point of view in his story „A Trifle From Real Life‟ in order to manipulate distance and achieve the effect he desires” (28). In the story, the narrator relates a conversation between Nikolai Belayeff and his lover‟s son Aliosha. The narration only reports Nikolai‟s thoughts, but in two sentences, once in the middle and then in the final sentence, the narrator relates information only Aliosha would know. It is through this shift that the reader finds which character has undergone a change, the “moved” character (Jauss 28). In fact, Jauss maintains that this particular rule regarding point of view indeed is broken frequently and with powerful results: 4 Because it is generally a bad idea to shift person in a work of fiction – to have a first-person narrator suddenly morph into a third-person narrator, for example – we leap to the conclusion that point of view should be singular and consistent. In fact, however singular and consistent the person of a story may be, the techniques that truly constitute point of view are inevitably multiple and shifting. For example, the point of view we call third-person omniscience may be consistently third person but it is not consistently omniscient, for the narrator must of necessity shift from omniscience to the dramatic point of view whenever she deals with a character whose mind she does not enter. (35) Jauss discusses a story by Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants,” and illustrates Hemingway‟s move from a strictly dramatic point of view to an instant in which the distance falters between one male character and the reader, with a single word. Jauss states, “He writes that the man „drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train‟” (27). What was a story written without any emotional narrative embellishment, with the intrusion of the word “reasonably” into the observations of one character, becomes instead the story from the perspective of that character. The grammatical point of view has not changed, but with that tiny revelation of opinion in which the male character considers the movement of passersby to be reasonable, the distance shifts closer, and the reader is able to view the story from within the man‟s consciousness, giving all the previous narration a new emotional tint. It is a shifting within stories, one that we readily accept without realizing it, upon which Jauss is focusing. His use of Hemingway and Chekhov helps to show this shift 5 working successfully. Jauss continues, “As these two examples suggest (Hemingway and Chekhov), perhaps the most important purpose of point of view is to manipulate the degree of distance between the characters and the reader in order to achieve the emotional, intellectual, and moral responses the author desires” (30). So more specifically, Jauss is referring to shifting of distance. Hills echoes the observation: “But it is possible to move „in‟ and „out‟ wonderfully effectively if you know what you want to do and set up the point of view so as to achieve it” (127). Hills uses an example from Faulkner. I have chosen Chekhov, King, and O‟Brien in order to discover how deeply they “committed” to the “contract” of point of view in their stories once they established it.